1972 Plymouth Road Runner

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

In 1982, Arizona's Frank Insana imagined himself behind the wheel of a 1969 Camaro powered by a thundering big-block engine. Or maybe a flared and striped 1979 Z28, like the ill-fated Camaro that starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Frank's father, however, had something more conservative in mind.
"My first car was a 1972 Plymouth Satellite Sebring, which my dad bought for me," Frank said. "It was a honeydew color with green interior, a 318 and an automatic. I was a bit disappointed, but Dad said, 'This is perfect, this is great! It's perfect for you!' I drove it to school and my friends immediately made fun of it."
Luckily for HMM readers, the story didn't end there. A thirst for street-machine knowledge led Frank to the library, where he discovered a picture of a 1972 Plymouth Road Runner. If this scene had been depicted in a Warner Brothers cartoon, Frank's eyes would've been suddenly replaced by two glowing light bulbs.
"One day I was in the library in the tune-up section and I saw the front of a Plymouth Road Runner and I thought, 'that looks hot,'" he said. "I started learning more and realized that basically my Satellite was just a stripped-down Road Runner."
For 1972, Plymouth's Road Runner package included a standard 400-cu in engine with a four-barrel carburetor, dual exhaust with bright chrome tips, a floor-shift three-speed (as the base transmission), heavy-duty suspension with front and rear anti-roll bars, raised white-letter tires on styled steel wheels, a performance hood and, of course, a bold set of stripes, as well as Road Runner callouts. For a kid on a budget, a V-8 powered Satellite Sebring loaded up with any or all of the aforementioned goodies was just the thing to turn the high school parking lot equivalent of a Wile E. Coyote crash-and-burn into a smoke-trailing Road Runner-esque victory.
"My first job was to buy wheels. I settled for a set of Appliance rims, 15 x 10 in the back and 14 x 7 in the front. I found a Road Runner grille, hood and bucket seats. I bought the Road Runner decals and emblems, which were still available from the Chrysler dealer and I painted the car Mediterranean Blue Metallic," reported Frank.
The dark paint, black bucket-seat interior, Road Runner trim, and eventual addition of a healthy 400-cu.in. engine gave the car street cred, but the nagging feeling that the car wasn't the genuine article persisted.
"I took it to car shows and I would cover the VIN so no one could tell it wasn't really a Road Runner. In retrospect, I should've been proud of all the work I had done, but I wasn't," he reported.
But while Frank was doing all of the parts hunting, research and wrenching it took to modify his Satellite, a funny thing happened--he became very knowledgeable about and very interested in 1971-'74 Chrysler B-bodies. To give you an idea about the extent of his enthusiasm for these cars, Frank has owned 15 to date and currently owns five.
One of those cars, of course, is this month's feature machine--an authentic 1972 Road Runner that Frank bought as a project back in 1994. By then, he'd amassed a pretty good supply of Road Runner parts--quite a few of which were hanging on the Satellite he'd been hopping up since high school.
"When the opportunity to buy a real 'RM code' 1972 Plymouth Road Runner presented itself in 1994, I just could not pass it up," he said. "My friend Jack Perry introduced me to Chip Hart. Chip owned some great old Mopars, including this '72 Road Runner. I always told Jack to let me know if Chip decided to sell one. It was September when the day finally came and I purchased the car from him for $1,500. It was built in November of 1971 as a one-of-329 340 four-speed. It had an awesome Pistol Grip shifter, but the original 340 engine was long gone, replaced by a 1976 360 engine."
The Road Runner would remain on the back burner for about 15 years, while work, family obligations and coaching Little League baseball occupied most of Frank's time. Then, in 1996 a microburst--a sudden, quick downdraft of wind known to have almost tornado-like destructive power--toppled a block wall onto the car, inflicting some superficial sheetmetal damage.
"We had one of those microbursts hit our house in August of 1996 and my wall around the yard fell on the Road Runner, crushing the quarter and destroying the passenger side door. The door was junk, although the quarter panel damage was minimal, and the decklid was damaged," he said.
From the mess, a pretty good plan emerged. Frank would rob all of the Road Runner parts off of his Road Runner-cloned Satellite, put the Satellite back to original and sell it. And when he built the new car, he'd do it as sort of a tribute to the tribute car he built in high school. Only better. Way better, actually. Gone would be the telltale touches of an impatient kid with little money to spend, like the exhaust system that terminated in a pair of glasspacks halfway underneath the car, the household-grade pile carpeting, the sheepskin seat covers and the grille customized with a black rattle-can paint job.
"From the time I bought it until the time I restored it, I bought a lot of parts--I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like," Frank said.
Most of the Road Runner would look factory. But the engine (not the engine compartment, mind you, just the engine) would be accessorized with a few of Frank's favorite speed and dress-up parts: a Holley Street Dominator manifold, a Holley 750, chrome rocker covers, a set of ceramic coated Cyclone headers with massive 2-inch primary tubes, a Mopar Performance ignition with a vintage aftermarket distributor cap, aftermarket plug wires and a smattering of chrome bits like the dipstick, power steering pump bracket and the throttle cable bracket. The engine itself, a 400 that Frank built for his Satellite, was topped with a set of 1967-vintage #915 closed-chamber 440 heads, 9.5:1 pistons and used a Comp Cams Hi-Energy Magnum hydraulic camshaft with .501 lift and 292-degrees duration.
When Frank's old high school Satellite was finally liberated of its engine and its best Road Runner specific components, it was sold off to a new owner in 1997. The restoration of the Road Runner wouldn't begin until 2010, but once begun, Frank tackled the job in a hurry.
The car was in well-used condition at the start and had received a number of facelifts over the years. "It had three different paint jobs over the original, the last color being red. After it rained, you could touch the paint and it would turn your finger red. It had some tacky pinstriping on the decklid and hood; the bench seat looked good, but when you sat in it, it cracked the vinyl. The previous owner left the windows rolled up in long-term storage and because of the heat, the gauges were all foggy. There was red paint overspray all over the door panels and they put new carpet in right over the old carpet."
Frank did much of the restoration work on the car himself, but left the body and paint repair to James Silva. James stripped the body with a D-A sander and welded fabricated patches in the lower quarter panels on each side. The car's bare body was sprayed with a self-etching primer, followed by multiple coats of high-build primer and bouts of block sanding. The car was finished with Blue Fire poly PPG urethane basecoat and several coats of clear.
Back at his shop, Frank removed the Road Runner's K-member, stripped it of old parts and patina, then refinished to like-new condition. For the rear, he located a Dana 60 axle as well as a set of leaf springs from a Hemi car and installed the bulletproof package with fresh paint and a 4.10:1 gear ratio. The Road Runner's A833 four-speed transmission was sent to Phil's Transmission in Scottsdale, Arizona, for a rebuild, then installed with a new 11-inch McLeod Borg and Beck-style clutch.
"I couldn't find the correct driveshaft for a car with a Dana 60 because there weren't many of those drivetrains built. So I took it to a local machine shop and had three-quarters of an inch removed to make it fit, then hit it with Cast Blast paint and cleared it."
Rather than replace the hard brake and fuel lines, Frank cleaned the factory pieces and clear-coated them. The original calipers were rebuilt and reused; the brake cylinders were replaced.
While the engine had been rebuilt before it was stored, nearly a decade had passed since then and the freshened 400 hadn't been fired. Consequently, "I took it to my favorite machine shop, Automotive Machine of Scottsdale, and had them fire up, break in and tune the engine to ensure that it ran well after 10 years of storage."
Inside, Frank recovered the seats using covers from Legendary, then installed the headliner and dashpad and fitted new door panels. He also restored every gauge, repaired some questionable under-dash wiring and refurbished the steering column.
By August 2010, the Road Runner was assembled--a whirlwind effort, considering it had returned from the body shop in February, Frank was doing the work himself, part time and every single nut and bolt had been removed from the car. But when the moment of truth arrived, the Road Runner refused to start. The culprit turned out to be a rebuilt OEM-type starter that Frank had installed before bolting in the engine.
"I knew that it would be a tough job to change the starter because the headers and the power steering box were in the way, so I decided to let the car sit until cooler weather," Frank said.
By December, the sun was a little lower in the sky and Frank had figured out a way to reduce his aggravation level when changing the Road Runner's starter motor. "I tackled the job and decided to go with a high-torque mini starter," he said. "If it goes bad I can get it out by just loosening the header."
With that fixed, problem number two arose--the recently restored car couldn't be coaxed into gear with the engine running.
"I talked to Jamie Passon of Passon Performance and he suggested a new pressure plate. While ordering that, I also ordered a roller-bearing-style bushing for the back of the crankshaft. I waited another three months to get the proper motivation after yet another failure and finally, by April 2011, I dropped the transmission and replaced the pressure plate. After readjusting everything, I fired the engine up and smoothly shifted the transmission into first gear. Later that day, I was cruising around the block in my Road Runner!"
And he still cruises in it today: The car sees regular but short-distance use--about 800 miles were added to the odometer last year.
"I'm very proud to own it and be able to drive it around town, even though it really goes through the fuel! Wherever I take the car, it gets lots of attention as a fine-detailed restoration of a muscle car like you would see back in the day."
OWNER'S VIEW
What a joy it is to finally be driving a car that I have so much money, time and effort tied up into. This Road Runner is a satisfying reminder of my cloned car, but much better, since it was done with all of the experience and knowledge that I've obtained over the last three decades. These genuinely are my favorite cars of all time and this is the Road Runner that I didn't quite finish back in high school. It's great to finally be able to take it to the level that I couldn't back then. --Frank Insana

This article originally appeared in the June, 2013 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.